6. Employment
6.4 The Danish-Somalis Experience with
Somali women in the employment focus group were very dissatisfied with the job centre and the municipality in general. Their criticism, however, was part of a general
181 Copenhagen Municipality, Økonomiforvaltningen Statistisk redegørelse om ansatte I Københavns kommune med anden etnisk baggrund. December 2012
182 See, for example Niels Henning Bjørn , Dorthe Agerlund Pedersen and Lene Kofoed Rasmussen, Somaliere og det danske arbejdsmarked – om netværk, kommunikation og integration (Somalis and the Danish Labour Market—on network, communication and integration), Arbejdspapir no. 13, Danish National Centre for Social Research (SFI), Copenhagen, 2003, dealing with the labour market generally; Tina Kallehave, ”Somaliske livsformer i velfærdsstaten. Udforskning af begreber il analyse af brydninger og processer i immigrationsproblematikken” (Somali forms of life in the welfare state. Exploration of concepts for analysis of conflicts and processes in immigration issues), PhD dissertation, Copenhagen University, September 2003, addresses the tensions and processes involved in the relations between the Somalis and the Danish welfare state and the group of Danish-Somalis in Denmark; Bækkelund Jagd, “Medborger eller modborger?”, conducted research for her PhD in 2007 among the Somali population in Copenhagen;
Immigrant Women’s Centre (Indvandrer Kvindecentret), ”Hvordan når vi hinanden? ... en dialog mellem danskere og herboende somaliere (How can we reach out to each other? a dialogue between Danes and Somalis living here), conference report, 1997, based on experiences at the centre and a conference for Somali women.
183 Bækkelund Jagd, “Medborger eller modborger?”.
184 Bækkelund Jagd, “Medborger eller modborger?”.
frustration with what they felt was a closed labour market and a media representation of Somalis as people who avoided working and preferred being on social welfare. At the edge of the conversation were issues such the risk of increased poverty and illness;
having one’s children taken away by the municipality; the lack of trust in complaint mechanisms and recognition of discrimination, and a concern on behalf of society with wasted money on the fiction of jobs instead of real jobs.
The labour market is closed off. It’s stagnant. I have lived here for 16 years, during those 16 years I’ve interned and tried to work and tried to work and tried to work ...
Now I’m old, and I’ve become angry and sad.185
In Somalia, when I was young, I worked in an office and had the future ahead of me. But here, it is people you don’t understand, they push you, they hold you back. You feel pressure from the employees at the job centre. And there are things which don’t add up, if you look at Somalis, there’s no one sitting at home, everyone is out. But it is commonly said that Somalis don’t work, we don’t understand that. It doesn’t make sense. It is not just among the employees at the job centres, it is generally said, in the media, the newspapers: Somalis just sit around at home.186
6.4.1 The Ferris Wheel
The focus group participants often used phrases such as “locked up” and “trapped” to characterise their situation. They expressed a deep frustration with what one characterised as the “Ferris Wheel in Tivoli”. They criticised the municipality for sending them to an endless number of activation-jobs from their experience seemingly without a chance for them to get a proper job with a proper salary.
It is not that Somali women want to sit at home and look after our children.
That’s not the way it is, we want to work, but we’re not sent out to work, they are just sent to something in between … We’re like a herd of animals, fenced in and just whipped to move around.187
The first suggestion mentioned in the group to improve the situation was that the never-ending job training had to end.
The participants did distinguish between their experiences of the centralised job centre (general public employment service) and the local Guidance Service (Åben Rådgivning), a special service established in six vulnerable housing areas of the city, open to all citizens irrespective of employment status, offering guidance, information and advice concerning education and employment). One of the participants referred to the adviser in the Guidance Service as a person with whom one could talk even though
185 EM3, Employment focus group, 14 November 2012.
186 EM4, Employment focus group, 14 November 2012.
187 Employment focus group, 14 November 2012.
she could not provide a job, whereas the job centre188 was described as “a hostile place with a locked door in front of a staircase and guarded by a security person”. Another described the complexity of the municipal employment system:
We don’t have a regular case worker, I have maybe 7–8 case workers. The whole thing is a mess, we meet someone, the next time there’s a different person, then they’ll say that you haven’t turned up, your social benefits are reduced, then they write up some small bit of the action plan etc. It is messy, the whole thing.189 Several reported that they felt the system was too harsh:
If you forget an appointment, your benefit payments are terminated—but everyone’s just human, people forget things.190
I have experienced forgetting an appointment and having my benefit payments cut. No one understands the human aspect, it happens that you forget an appointment. I am human and sometimes forget, why aren’t you given a chance?
And they say, that’s the way it is. When the Danes say “That’s the way it is”, then there are no options.191
A threatening tone is also implied. And it’s been there the whole time. For example, before the end of 2006 you need to get a job, for example at one of those activity places they’ve been to. Or in 2012, if you don’t find a job, then there’ll be no benefit payments, so then I say, well I don’t want to be on benefits, can you not just give me a job. There are a lot of people who want a job and they then don’t understand why they’re being threatened with their benefits payments being terminated. But there is no work.192
Even though this focus group expressed frustration and negative expectations of their own future position in the labour market, they did know Danish-Somalis who were able to secure employment and could give up the job centre.
To a certain degree, interviews with the Employment and Integration Administration mirrored the description of the job centre as a place emanating hostility and alienation:
With most of the residents we have from non-Western countries, the authorities largely do not contribute with anything positive. And then we can see the set-up
188 Similar experiences are described in several reports for example in the 1997 Somali report from the Immigrant Women’s Centre and among isolated ethnic-minority women in a report from 2008 commissioned by the municipality itself: ALS Research, (Socially isolated women with ethnic minority background) Socialt isolerede kvinder med anden etnisk baggrund i Københavns kommune, Report commissioned by the municipality. November 2008.
189 EM4, Employment focus group, 14 November 2012.
190 EM5, Employment focus group, 14 November 2012.
191 EM7, Employment focus group, 14 November 2012.
192 EM3, Employment focus group, 14 November 2012.
… just think that there’s a guard in uniform who says welcome. You were taken aback yourself as well when you passed ‘the prison’. We don’t think of it as a prison, I know that it’s an old vault. But when someone doesn’t know something in an absolute sense and has difficulties navigating and is very concerned with all the bad stuff surrounding them, it is not easy to come here.193
According to the Employment and Integration Administration, the Guidance Service has turned out to be a valuable improvement in the service since 2009:
In all kinds of ways, we do communicate out in the social housing developments that we are here for them, that we’re a service available to them and that here, there’s a place for them to come.194
And it means an incredible amount to meet them under, I think, relatively less formal circumstances and somehow in a more level way, and then to signal that I’m actually here because I want to help you. I’m not here to control you, or to sanction you or anything else like that.195
One of the stakeholders interviewed, employed in the Employment Administration, characterised the Danish-Somali women in general as strong and resourceful, although they did not always seem to consider themselves strong and resourceful.
In the employment focus group, participants described the effects of being unemployed on social benefits, in terms of poverty, and physical and mental stress and illnesses.
They become psychologically unwell from being shoved around the system and then the children are taken away.196
You’re given 10,000 [DKK, about €1,340] in social benefits. One day you’re not able to come in, you’ve left a message, someone else took your message, but it doesn’t reach [the right person]. Then you lose some of your benefits payment! Then there’s the headache, what to do. Rent has to be paid, children need food. No one else is able to help. We don’t have grandparents and parents to borrow from or go to. So many injuries I’ve gotten from the job centre. The traffic light’s red but I’ll still cross … Because of stress … To me, it’s important
193 Interview with DE, head of team at job centre, Employment and Integration Administration, 31 May 2013.
194 Interview with DE, head of team at job centre, Employment and Integration Administration, 31 May 2013.
195 Interview with DE, head of team at job centre, Employment and Integration Administration, 31 May 2013.
196 Interview with DE, head of team at job centre, Employment and Integration Administration, 31 May 2013.
that there’s rent and that it’s warm. And that’s why I need my social benefits, because otherwise we’ll be kicked out.197
The respondents in the focus group talked of the risk of losing one’s livelihood or benefits as an ever-present fact, increasing stress levels and the feeling of precariousness.
With few available outlets from which to borrow money, the respondents emphasised, poverty is a real fear.
Even though the risk of losing social benefits was very high on the agenda in the focus group, with references to their own or friends’ experiences, interviews with the Employment and Integration Administration staff indicated that it was rare for this sanction to be carried out.198 One explanation of the fear could be that references to loss of benefits are common in the letters sent to clients by the Benefit Payment Service, a different department from the job centres.
But the situation of poverty and being poor was acknowledged by the Employment and Integration Administration informants as the main problem for unemployed ethnic minorities on social benefit in general:
For a lot of the citizens we meet, for ethnic Danes as well as for citizens of other ethnicities, I am just about to say, maybe citizens with a non-Western background, it is about extreme poverty and depravity in reality. So heavy, heavy loads to carry.199
The significance of migration history, asylum history and being on the now abolished start help programme in an extremely poor economic situation as newcomers were related as factors in the discussions in the focus group on social protection and health that often create an increased precariousness and impede labour market integration.
Participants in the focus group on employment exchanged several stories characterised as mistreatment by the municipality or job centre concerning social benefits and the lengthy procedures for making complaints that were ultimately unsuccessful. Referring to the closed labour market, most of the participants seemed to regard the job centre as the gate to improving their situation, which can be seen as a kind of structural confidence in the institution itself, but they were most critical and disappointed in evaluating the practice and experience of using the job centre:
They open a lot of projects. This project, that project. They’re wasting 2 million kroner. Afterwards …? They might toss in 25,000 for rent, I don’t know. And afterwards? Why plan? We want to work, why constantly plan? Why the job
197 Focus group participant.
198 Interview with DE, head of team at job centre, Employment and Integration Administration, 31 May 2013.
199 Interview with DE, head of team at job centre, Employment and Integration Administration, 31 May 2013.
centre, job centre, job centre. Ask here, ask here, ask, it is a waste of heads, waste of money. Copenhagen, they’re making a bubble.
What has happened, has happened. If we just think progressively and do something about this. Maybe from the state, they could come down and say, what is going on, are people getting what they’re owed or are they just shuffled around and around. Maybe every third month they could come by and see if people do as they’re supposed to. Otherwise we feel like a mouse, trapped in a net.200
The participants saw the government as the proper authority to set things right and stop wasting money and find proper jobs for people.